Adam Ingram: I cannot give the hon. Gentleman details about that, because we have to look at the issues on a case-by-case basis. However, I would say instinctively that if approval was being sought in a case where the use was for torture or for malign ends, it would not get through our strict criteria. If the hon. Gentleman has examples of that, will he please write to me and I will give him a more considered answer.

Des Browne: My hon. Friend is free to gauge his constituents' views using any method that he thinks is indicative. I have a particular point of view, so it is not for me to determine how other people should contribute to the debate. However, I encourage all methods of contributing to the debate, which should be as wide and as detailed as possible. I am struck by the fact that most people who oppose the decision that the Government have and put forward for debate are more interested in discussing the process than the details of the debate.

Keith Vaz: St. Malo was important because, for the first time, British and French Governments agreed to work together to improve the capabilities that are available not just for Britain in Europe but for the specific relationship with other EU countries. Is my right hon. Friend satisfied with the progress that has been made in implementing the principles of St. Malo, bearing in mind that there seems to have been a difference of opinion between himself and the French Defence Minister over the funding of the European research initiative?

Adam Ingram: I would like to think so, because that is way we are going. I am surprised that hon. Gentleman asks that question, given the intensive effort that has gone into ensuring interoperability and compatibility between systems. I draw his attention to what we are seeking to do with the United States on the joint strike fighter, which is a good example of our joining the United States in taking on an advanced aircraft. This is not just about fixed-wing aircraft—it is happening across a whole range of platforms to ensure that we have such interoperability; otherwise NATO cannot effectively deliver the resources that it seeks to, and needs to, in many areas of the world.

Mr. Speaker: I have had no indication.

Mr. Speaker: Business questions are on Thursday and the Leader of the House can be questioned then—as the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows as he always questions the Leader of the House on Thursdays.

John Reid: As we do in these debates, I am merely allowing the hon. and learned Gentleman the opportunity to substantiate the serious allegation that he has just made. I think he said that, at the very least, the facts that I gave at the Dispatch Box could be disputed in their veracity, which, in my understanding of English, is another way of saying that they could be disputed in their truthfulness. Does he dispute the fact that the figure for unpaid work is up by 30 per cent. over the past two years? Does he dispute the fact that this year four times more offenders were taught basic skills than four years ago, or that five times more offenders are subject to accredited offender behaviour programmes than five years ago? [ Interruption.] I take it that, as usual, there is an unsubstantiated—

John Reid: In the course of the debate, Mr. Speaker, the House will have noticed that not one of the facts I mentioned—the veracity of which was apparently doubted—have been challenged. That is an elementary matter in debate.

John Reid: I recall that the hon. Gentleman has raised the matter before and, yes, I am open to that suggestion. My view is that among the many causal factors we should address inside prison is low literacy and numeracy, which lead to a range of frustrations—anger, the inability to get and hold down a job, and so on. Outside prison, housing is another problem we have to deal with, so I give him a guarantee that we will at least consider his suggestion during the debates. I cannot promise him that a commitment will be given instantaneously because there are resource implications, but I do not dispute the evidential basis for his assertion—unlike the last one made from the Opposition Benches.

John Reid: On the Scottish model, first, I have no vote in what the Scots decide. Secondly, from time immemorial, the Scots have had a completely different legal system, based on Roman law rather than case precedent. Thirdly, I do not always agree that the Scottish Executive choose the best way even for Scottish conditions. Laying those points aside, my hon. Friend's main point is whether the proposals are based on contestability or partnership. The truth is that they are based on both, because we are looking for a partnership with not only organisations that are seeking a profit, but voluntary and charitable organisations, many of whom do not seek a profit but bring a particular expertise to particular areas. Now that my hon. Friend is back, may I say that we have missed him? We have missed the whips and the stings that he brings to harnessing the Government in partnership or contestability, depending on how one views it. If my hon. Friend bears with me on this, he will see that I am trying to supplement the probation service by releasing the energies of other sectors in support of what probation is trying to do—not to replace it or just introduce contestability.

John Reid: If I can make a little progress, I shall come back to hon. Members again later. I also have to make some progress because I am under your careful eye, Mr. Speaker.
	I was talking about the fact that protection, punishment and deterrence are no use without rehabilitation and that rehabilitation ought to be a continuum—in other words, from inside to outside of prison. That is why the supervision of offenders in the community after they leave jail is so important. It must be aimed ultimately at reducing crime, which is one of the main benchmarks of our success, reducing reoffending and thereby protecting the public.
	It is right that we have invested heavily in this area. The probation service has received a 40 per cent. increase in the last five years and something like £900 million more has been spent on the probation service this year. As I said, we are talking about a real-terms increase of 40 per cent. What we are doing has not been done against the background of any starvation of resources from the probation service. No one should believe that that is the case. Having said that, it is also right to point out that there has been a great deal of improvement in the results, so we should not believe that no progress has been made in probation. More than 50,000 offenders completed unpaid work in the community this year, which is an increase of 30 per cent. on two years ago. I also mentioned a fourfold increase in teaching basic skills this year and five times more offenders being accredited with offending behaviour programmes.
	There is, however, a limit to the progress made and, as hon. Members have pointed out in today's discussion, that limit that has remained with some obstinacy. The truth of the matter is that, regardless of the colour of the Government—and almost regardless of the amount of resources—the reoffending rate has stayed obstinately high in recent decades. About 60 per cent. of offenders go on to commit another crime within two years and Members will know of cases where dangerous offenders have been poorly supervised. Let me say this in simple terms. That is not a tolerable position to continue with. It does not help offenders and, more importantly, it is a poor deal for communities and for the vast majority of hard-working, law-abiding citizens whom we seek to protect.
	That is the main purpose behind the Bill.
	The failure to reduce the reoffending rate cannot be explained away simply by blaming a lack of resources. As I have said, the budget has increased by 40 per cent. in five years to more than £900 billion—a record. Although I concede that case loads have risen, the amount spent per offender has gone up. In addition, we have increased probation staff by 5,000 since 2001. Indeed, we have increased probation staff by 50 per cent. since 1997, while case loads have increased by 30 per cent. We have made a great deal of investment over the past 10 years.

David Lepper: Does the Home Secretary agree that the kind of work that he has just outlined to deal with offenders is best based at a very local level? Has he heard from the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe) about the success of the prolific offender management scheme, which he helped to launch some two years ago in Brighton and Hove? How will the move towards a more regional organisation for managing offenders in the community help in dealing with those very local problems, which is where the success is often found?

John Reid: First, this is not just a matter of competition. It is a matter of allowing ourselves the assistance of a diverse range of providers, with expertise that is particular to particular areas and that could help—in other words, a panoply or reservoir of people who can assist in trying to reduce reoffending. Secondly, I think that the hon. Gentleman is asking me, what evidence is there that the present position, which is voluntary—opening up to bringing in the voluntary, the charitable or the private sector—is bound to be less successful than the Bill? The truth of the matter is that, at the moment, the rate of giving access to other than the publicly provided probation service is very low indeed, although it is not so low as to mean that the Bill is a change in principle.
	In the prison and probation service, about 25 per cent. of the services are already provided from other than the public sector, so there is no great step in principle in the Bill. Within that, however, the figure is very low as regards the local probation boards themselves. The total amount of non-public-sector provision in the probation service has fallen in the past few years from a height of about 5 per cent. to the present 2 or 3 per cent. That is since we withdrew the central targets. The element that has been commissioned from outside the public sector has largely been commissioned by central Government. That should not surprise us. The hon. Gentleman will recognise that it is more than 200 years ago since one political economist wrote of the tendency of monopolies to preserve their own monopoly. That is true in all walks of life. We are trying to provide the legal framework that allows others to come into that partnership.

Frank Field: Although many of us will have good examples of the probation service working—indeed, we have many probation officers in our constituency parties to remind us how effective they are—may I give the Home Secretary an example of an incident that occurred today in my office? An individual phoned about a mentally ill prisoner who has been released early—no doubt because there is pressure on places. The person made contact with us because the ex-prisoner's mother used to live in Birkenhead. The prisoner is homeless. We phoned the probation service and were told that not much could be done. We asked what actions would be taken. The probation service thought that there would not be much joy before Christmas. Although we are mindful of the probation service working well, when he is crafting the new reforms, will he make sure that, when they are complete, the buck stops on somebody's desk and action has to be taken in circumstances such as those?

John Reid: I am familiar with some of those courses as a constituency MP and as Armed Forces Minister and Secretary of State for Defence. My right hon. Friend is quite right, but that is only one area in which we have prohibited incorporation or partnership. We want to make a common effort to tackle the problem, and try to open up the system so that there is some competition. We will not do so in the first instance in offender management—we envisage that that will remain a publicly run service—but there is a vast reservoir of talent in the voluntary and charitable sectors. I hope that such a reservoir will develop in the private sector, as it can provide courses and education, as well as advice on relationships, mentoring and role models, that can be used to supplement the efforts of the probation service. May I tell my hon. Friends that I realise that that can be portrayed all too easily as diminishing the efforts, energy and professionalism of the probation service? It is not meant to do that. It is meant to supplement those efforts by bringing in the talents of people out there. In many ways it represents a return to the roots of the probation service and the values of our party, by bringing people in from the voluntary sector for the purpose of self-help.
	I must make progress and draw my remarks to a conclusion. By being courteous to Members, I am being discourteous to my Opposition counterpart in the time that I have taken.
	To sum up, although the Bill contains a range of measures, the main idea is to liberate and harness in partnership the talents of those in the voluntary, the charitable and the private sectors who can contribute to partnering our public sector probation service in tackling rehabilitation and reducing reoffending. Government investment will continue. We will not rush the reforms in overnight. We want a measured approach, not because of objections from colleagues, but because it is sensible to take a measured approach that balances the obvious need for urgent improvements with the system's ability to cope with that change.
	The Bill is the product of a hard look at current systems. I recognise that it means taking tough choices, especially for those who work in our probation service, but it brings the probation service into a new world, where we supplement the efforts of our traditional probation service with the talents and expertise of the voluntary and charitable sectors. That is vital to our work in cutting crime, reducing reoffending and protecting the public. That is the primary purpose of the Bill. I commend the Bill to the House.

Edward Garnier: No. I was discussing the Labour party's principles, to which I do not adhere, but I salute the hon. Gentleman for maintaining his allegiance to the principles of the party to which he belongs but from which others appear to have moved away.
	The Liberal Democrats, too, judging from the comments of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam in Eastbourne and from their amendment on the Order Paper, have a rooted aversion to contracting out or the provision of such services by non-state organisations. We have no such objection. We support opening up the supervision of offenders to non-state providers, just as we championed, in the teeth of Labour protests, setting up privately run prisons. The public service has no monopoly on the public service ethos, nor should it disparage private sector disciplines.
	However, the manner in which the Government have set about mending what they have broken is wrong headed, counter-productive, unnecessary and incompetent. The Opposition want rigorous and effective supervision of those sentenced to community sentences. We want the effective management of offenders from end to end, as the Government claim that they want. We want judges and magistrates to be provided with accurate and relevant pre-sentence reports in good time. We want the public's confidence in community sentencing to grow rather than worsen. We want those subject to drug rehabilitation requirements, unpaid work requirements, activity requirements, curfews, residence requirements, alcohol treatment requirements or attendance centre requirements imposed under community orders to be positively supervised and encouraged to comply and reform. However, if the Government so manage the system that probation staff leave the service or feel undervalued and cannot perform to the standard that we have a right to expect, the public's confidence in non-custodial sentences will diminish even further.
	Far too many offenders not only breach the terms of their community sentences but commit further offences—on an industrial scale. I do not blame the people who work in the probation service for that, although, of course, every large organisation contains variation in calibre. However, it is unreasonable, as the Government publicly demand but privately do not believe, to expect offenders on community punishments or those released from prison on licence or on parole to be under the 24-hour-a-day control of the probation service.
	When, as happened 98 times in the past two years, a serious crime such as murder is committed by an offender on licence, the Government's reaction is to blame someone else—indeed anyone else—but never to analyse or explain why the probation service is unable to guarantee 24-hour-a-day supervision. The Government's cutting of face-to-face Parole Board interviews and requiring it to read tick-box assessments on long-term and violent criminals is their doing and no one else's.
	The supervisory services need encouragement, support and leadership. In our view, they also need the assistance of the private and third sectors. We want better public protection, not more Government abdication. Early release of dangerous criminals has gone too far, and the Government should take responsibility.
	We have no political or philosophical objection to the private or third sectors carrying out the supervisory services that are currently and exclusively carried out by the probation service. There are many examples of excellent work, which assists in rehabilitating offenders, in privately run prisons—and in the Prison Service, as I know from visiting many prisons and young offenders institutions in the past 12 months.
	There are many examples of charities and faith-based groups, large and small, working with offenders in and outside prison, as I know from having met the people who work in them and with offenders and ex-offenders in all parts of the country. They should be encouraged. Those non-state organisations gain their strength and understanding of the issues and the individuals with whom they have to deal from the localities where they operate. They will not be assisted by the imposition of a Whitehall-directed bureaucracy called the offender management service, whose chief executive, under the direct control of the Home Secretary, will tell regional offender managers how and what to commission from probation trusts, which are answerable to those up the chain of command rather than accountable to local people. They know how many prison spaces and what kinds of supervision, rehabilitation, education and training are needed in their localities, and will be far more responsive than central or regional officials.
	In this Bill, we see a Government addicted to control and centrally devised models, fascinated by tinkering and wholly lacking any understanding of human nature or the need for services that do things for the public rather than to them. Why will the Prison Service, its personnel and buildings be better run by NOMS than by a dedicated director of the Prison Service with well trained and professional staff?
	Why will offenders be better supervised by NOMS, ROMs and probation trusts micro-managed from the Home Office than by locally commissioned and provided services, be they in the public, private or not-for-profit sector? We do not know, because the Government do not know. What evidence proves the Government's policy of micro-management is right and will work? Where is the evidence to show that this Government's legislative equivalent of St. Vitus's dance will add to public safety or public confidence and improve offender supervision? We do not know, and they do not either.
	The Government are in trouble; they have lost their way and have absolutely no idea what they are supposed to be doing. However, all is not lost—even this side of the general election. The official Opposition are here to help. We will improve the Bill in Committee and on Report; we will make the provision of the necessary supervisory services more relevant to the needs of the public and offenders; we will ensure that the probation service in the public sector and the other providers from the private and not-for-profit sectors work together as a complementary whole for the public good.
	We will ensure that the public's needs are served through local participation and local commissioning and that the sterile battle involving those who believe that public services can be provided only by state organisations directed from Whitehall by "here today, gone tomorrow" Ministers, and those who believe that the private sector is the work of the devil, is finally and usefully brought to an end.
	To that end, my party and its supporters in and out of Parliament will harry, chase, chivvy and argue with this desperate Government to ensure that the Bill delivers solutions that reflect and respond to, rather than ignore, the public's needs and expectations. Our support for the Bill tonight is not open-ended, but conditional on the Government's responding to us and acknowledging where the public good lies. If they work with us and improve the Bill, the Government will have a new regime for the supervision of offenders that works. If they ignore us, we will, with others who share our aims, defeat this Bill on Third Reading and in another place.
	The Government have a choice; I suggest that they make the right one.

Austin Mitchell: It will be difficult to follow the farrago of nonsense that we have just heard; it is difficult even to understand its conclusions. I took it to mean, "We don't like the Bill; we are embarrassed by it because of our support for the voluntary sector. We are not going to oppose it tonight,"—given the number of Members on the Conservative Benches, it would never have been a vigorous opposition—"but we will probably vote against it later."
	What sense can we make of that? I cannot even follow the speed at which the hon. and learned Gentleman delivered his speech. It precluded me from properly writing my own speech, a brilliant and incisive demolition of the Government's arguments. I will find it difficult to read, as it has been written down at such speed.
	I am not happy with the notion, although it is fairly typical of our approach to government, of getting bright ideas from the team of geniuses who form a kind of nimbus around the Prime Minister. In this case, one such genius, Mr. Carter—now Lord Carter—an expert in health service privatisation had the bright ideas. He said that there should be a coherent structure of offender management, which is a good idea, nominated offender managements, another good idea, and a follow-through from prison to the probation service, an excellent idea. Incidentally, I do not see why my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has not followed the Scottish precedent and required statutory co-operation between the prisons and the probation service in the Bill. That would be an excellent development of Lord Carter's original idea.
	However, with the good ideas came the bad one of contestability, which seems more important in the eyes of my right hon. Friend and the Government who are pursuing the issue than community, caring and co-operation—the principles on which the probation service currently runs.
	Contestability, in my view, means bringing in the private sector. The private sector will no doubt be pushing the voluntary sector ahead of it as protective cover, but this is really about making profits from a caring service, and I do not think we should embark on that. My hon. Friends and I have organised half a dozen debates in Westminster Hall—I think I was responsible for two of them—in which, interestingly, no one spoke in favour of contestability except the junior Ministers who replied. The junior Minister replying to the last debate was kind enough to approach me privately at the end. She said "I have only two words to say to you, Austin." I thought she was going to say "You're right", but the two words were an invitation to go forth and multiply. I thought that that was possibly the essence of the Government's case.
	No satisfactory case has been made in the submissions. Of the 748 received, only 10 were in favour of the measure. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary quoted lovingly from those 10, but did not quote at all from the 738 that were against it. I do not know where the pressure is coming from. Perhaps it represents—I hope that it does—a Macchiavellian desire to embarrass the Conservative party, given its adherence to the voluntary sector. The Conservatives are going to use the voluntary sector to solve all social problems, including those of the health service, education, caring and community. They are going to thrust it forward in order to save money. Perhaps our objective is to nail them to their own ambiguities, a very difficult anatomical feat to perform. I can think of no other explanation.
	Could it be that there is pressure from the private sector, from the big correction companies that want to muscle in on the market? Could it be that it is merely a question of prejudice on the part of my right hon. and hon. Friends in favour of the private sector against the public sector? I cannot see how a service that is about rehabilitation and caring for people would be run better for profit than for human motives, such as a desire to improve, help, support and sustain.
	No business case has been made. The regulatory impact assessment said that there would be savings of between 3 and 8.5 per cent., but there was no indication of how the figures were arrived at. The assessment also spoke of savings of £625 million. How are those savings to be made, other than by cuts in the numbers and organisation of the service? There has been no rational argument, and there is no rational evidence, that the private sector can run the service better, and virtually no statistics have been offered. The few that have been offered have been disproved.
	In the other place, my noble Friend Lady Scotland said that the system was failing because 60 per cent. of people were reoffending. It turns out that 66 per cent. are reoffending on leaving prison and 53 per cent. are reoffending after being sentenced to community service. But the reoffending rate among those under the management of the probation service includes offences committed before the original sentence. If those are taken into account—and they cannot be part of redemption, can they?—the figure is only 44 per cent.

Austin Mitchell: I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I only wish I had been able to include a list of services while writing my speech during the fast and gabbled contribution from the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman. It is wrong to create, as we have been doing, a climate of fear by suggesting that we are releasing psychologically disturbed people who then go out and kill other people, and that offenders are not being properly looked after and sustained by the probation service and that the result is that they will reoffend yet again. That implies that the streets are thronging with people who are intent on murder, burglary and reoffending and that the redemption services, the reform services and the probation service are not achieving anything. We are in a sense attacking the probation service by creating a climate of fear. That is wrong, because the service is working well.
	It is a service that was reformed only four years ago—in 2001, when we developed the national probation service. It is meeting all its targets; I will not go through the long list of them, but it has 30 targets and they are all being achieved in substantial part. That case has been made by the relevant trade union. If there are failures in the service, they are because the service is still undermanned despite the increase in numbers that there has been, and underpaid, and because it has had too much pressure put on it, and too many duties given to it, it has been unable to cope in the fully effective fashion—the 100 per cent.-effective fashion—that we would want. Therefore, the failures are problems to do with strain and limited resources.
	In view of that record, the attitude should be if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I do not think that Ministers are saying that it is broke—I hope that they are not saying that. They are certainly not saying that any improvement can be effected by bringing in the private sector or the voluntary sector. I agree that we can all learn from the voluntary sector. It has been said that we can learn from the Prince's Trust, and that is absolutely right; it might have a contribution to make. We can learn from the boy scouts as well. As has been suggested, we can learn by bringing in ex-Army men. We can even learn by bringing in mercenaries returned from Africa to run the probation service. There are many organisations we can learn from and many things we can learn, but if the organisation is working well, we do not have to learn those lessons—we do not have to invoke such new experiences. So, to repeat, my point is if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
	It is also a local service that works by local co-operation. We will weaken that local co-operation if we replace the management board by a trust dominated by businessmen that does not include—at least not in the same way as is currently the case—the magistrates, the judges, the local authorities, the police and the voluntary sector. They are included in the existing structures and that is a valuable feature of them. It has been very important that all such sectors co-operate. The local authorities and the voluntary sector have got a vital role to play, but we are about to centralise, regionalise, bring in the private sector and create not a vibrant mixed economy, but a patchwork quilt. That will make it difficult to provide career structures and career development, and it will provide a baptism of fear for existing services that they do not deserve.
	At a time when the Government are preaching in one Department a new localism and the transfer of power down to local people, which I think is absolutely the right thing to do, we are in this crucial service transferring power upwards to regional and national structures, and taking it away from local sectors in co-operation with each other. That is wrong in principle—and it is even more wrong to bring profit into this.

Austin Mitchell: If that is an example of the kind of poppycock that the Conservative party is thinking, I am happy for it to be made public.
	Who will provide these services? Big national correction companies that want to get into this market will provide many of them. Local services will be provided by national organisations, which will come in for the contract period and then leave, thereby disrupting local continuity and the training of staff, and making the staff insecure. Such a service will no longer be a local service involving the co-operation of all the various bodies. Currently, local authorities, magistrates, judges and the voluntary sector all co-operate in pursuit of the common purpose of the redemption of those who need support and sustenance. The simple purity of my argument is that such support will not be provided on a cash basis by a profit-making organisation. In that regard, the argument advanced in the previous intervention is absolutely wrong.
	What can the private sector offer? It is certainly true that it can cut costs—and it can reduce numbers. It has to make a profit, and efficiency and economies of scale will not be achieved without weakening the local basis and depersonalising the various structures. What is our experience of the private sector? When Morrison took over the running of hostels for the probation service, costs rose by 62 per cent., so the private sector is not necessarily much more efficient. It certainly cannot provide the same service to the courts and community that the existing structure provides.
	Conflicts of interest could also arise, as was pointed out in a Westminster Hall debate. A probation officer employed by the private sector could say, "I recommend that this person be committed to a correctional institution. It just so happens that my company runs a marvellous institution, called Dothelags Hall, just down the road. I have a video and a brochure showing what a wonderful service they will get there." Or a probation officer might say, "As it happens, your honour, I also represent a tagging organisation, called McTagits. We can provide automatic tags and supervision—all through the same company." All manner of such possibilities exist. Someone might say, "I represent CharitableDrainsRUs, which digs drains for charities, churches and other voluntary organisations", and the person before the court could be committed for community service. In pursuing this approach, we are hitting the morale of a devoted and overstretched service that is working better than it has worked for a long time. The 2001 reforms are coming through and yielding benefits—and just at that moment, we choose to destroy the service's morale and to create uncertainty. Probation officers in Grimsby have made representations to me, and I am sympathetic to their case. They are a devoted and concerned bunch, and the case that they are making is absolutely right. I could not explain to them why we are creating this uncertainty and fear, disrupting their careers and making their jobs uncertain. I could not explain why the only way to improve the service is to create the fear that they will lose their jobs, and that some other organisation will be brought in. Psychologically, that is an impossible way to approach what is a devoted service.
	I do not want the atmosphere of fear, uncertainty and betrayal that is being created in the probation service by the threat of these measures. The effect is uncertain, because we are not sure how many private sector and voluntary organisations will be brought in, but there is no point in people talking about the benefits if they are not going to be brought in—assuming that the Bill is passed—on a considerable scale. It is clear that that is what will happen. The probation service does not deserve this proposal, which will undermine it.

Austin Mitchell: I would ask whether those organisations should be allowed to use their expertise on such a scale as to threaten and endanger the existing service and structures. To fully utilise their expertise, that is what would have to happen. In any case, Shelter is unlikely to bid for a large number of contracts, but provides the figleaf for the powerful private sector correction companies to which the service will actually be transferred.
	I regret the Minister's intervention as he made it at psychologically the right time to destroy my moving peroration, which would have reduced the House to tears and an inability to produce any arguments in favour of the Bill. I shall therefore skip the peroration and say only that this Bill is wrong and I cannot support it.

Nicholas Clegg: I was not aware of those points, but the hon. and learned Gentleman makes an extremely helpful intervention that serves to underline the point I was making: if bureaucracies are provided at the centre, especially when, as in the case of NOMS, the bureaucracy has been provided in a legislative vacuum without meaningful debate in the House, the danger, which many people predicted, is that they grow and grow for no obvious purpose. They are not hemmed in by a clear political mandate.
	I want to speak about the all-important and controversial issue of contestability. I understand that the Home Secretary is a busy man, but it is a pity that he is no longer in the Chamber. I am not making a debating point about his presence here or elsewhere, but he made a barbed remark about whether it was possible for Liberals to oppose something that he thinks is an act of de-monopolisation.
	The principle at stake is not whether there should be private or voluntary sector participation in the provision of probation services, particularly non-core services. That happens already. As I said earlier, local probation boards already contract out to private and voluntary sector operators. On Thursday, I visited an excellent drug rehabilitation project in Newport, under a contract from the local probation board, which provided outstanding services. That already happens, although there is then an argument about whether it is happening enough. The Home Secretary is already putting considerable pressure on probation boards, as I said, to raise the amount contracted out in the next financial year from less than 3 per cent. of the total budget to somewhere near 10 per cent.
	The problem with the Bill is the artificial enforcement of greater contracting out and privatisation from the top. In my view, privatisation can work and has worked when private sector operators compete with each other in the pursuit of consumers who are free to choose in a commercial environment. In that case, most private sector operators are accountable to the custom given to them by those consumers. The Bill, however, would erect a totally distorted, rigged market in which contracts are dished out to private contractors at the behest of the Home Secretary via the new quangos—the so-called trusts. Even if one is an advocate of privatisation, this is daft and monopolistic privatisation, because it is the worst combination of administrative monopoly and centralisation in Whitehall and unaccountable, fragmented, private sector activity at local level. Far from being a blow for a liberal vision of a de-monopolised probation service, it is arrogating new powers to the centre and increasing the monopoly of decision-making power given to the Home Secretary to chop and change the probation service at will.
	Why has the Home Office not produced any data or study empirically to prove the virtues of open-ended contestability? In particular, what calculations have been made of the transition costs of such disruptive change? We have discovered over and over again in the past nine or 10 years that, under the so-called rubric of reform in the public services, Ministers tend to forget that the very act of introducing such reforms creates enormous costs that prevent those public services from accruing all the benefits that the reforms are purported to bring to them. How do we know that the transition costs will not outweigh the so-called benefits?
	There are alternatives. The Scottish example was alluded to earlier and it is close to our heart because it was the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Executive who pushed for plans for a centralised single probation agency in Scotland to be dropped, adopting instead through legislation introduced in November last year a model of community justice authorities. That legislation imposes a statutory obligation on the community justice authorities to co-operate with all agencies on an localised, area-by-area basis to provide that elusive goal of a seamless probation service.
	That model combines the statutory compulsion to co-operate—to create that seamless service—with the freedom to innovate according to local conditions. Importantly, it allows—in fact, it actively encourages—the further expansion of the voluntary sector, but it does so according to clear, locally driven demand, not top-down diktat from the centre. Surely it would make more sense to advocate that approach, based on collaboration, but with a mixed economy of public probation officers and the voluntary sector and, most importantly, driven by local demand meeting local circumstances in the context of what is best for offenders as they reintegrate into their own local communities.
	I am not advocating a total standstill in the arrangements. For instance, I strongly believe that the present distribution of responsibilities for the oversight and implementation of the unpaid work of community sentences needs to be looked at again. We need to be as radical as we can to boost public confidence in visible, credible and rigorous community sentences, which most observers accept is absolutely essential if we are to build up a stable of alternatives to custodial sentences and ever more overcrowded prisons.
	The Bill seems to us a missed opportunity, which is why we will vote against Second Reading. I urge Opposition Members not to chivvy and chase but, having articulated such profound objections to the Bill, simply to do the right thing: not to score debating points about whether one is for or against the private sector, but to recognise that this is a flawed Bill, which does not deserve a Second Reading, and to join us in voting against it.
	The Bill risks creating disruption to a service that needs clear, steady direction, not endless managerial instability. It risks diverting attention away from the bigger issues that affect reoffending rates. It risk overlooking the more pragmatic approaches that are being developed elsewhere, notably in Scotland. It certainly risks imposing target-driven centralisation, exactly when the national debate on the organisation of all public services is increasingly suggesting that what we need in the future is less, not more, centralisation. In short, it risks exacerbating, not curing, the problems of chronic reoffending that we all seem to agree must be tackled urgently.

Mike Wood: This is an important debate, so I hope that my cold will not mean that most of what I say is unintelligible. Despite the Home Secretary's emollient words earlier in the debate, I am very concerned about many aspects of the Bill for two reasons: it will not cut reoffending; nor will it give the public greater protection—rather the reverse.
	John Colvill, the chair of my local probation board, said in a letter to me recently:
	"Offender provision would be fragmented and risks to the public would only be increased by a web of contracts put together in the futile hope that they might together like the proverbial jigsaw. They might not. It is a dangerous risk to take."
	It is my view that the Bill will fracture the probation function in detriment to the public, offenders and the courts. It will centralise and privatise, against the wishes of the vast majority of those consulted by the Government. We have heard several references to the Home Office's consultation of 2005, when 788 of the 798 respondents were against the plans. The Home Secretary said, "Well, this is a lobby." Of course we can say that, but it was a consultation exercise and the result was an absolutely universal rejection of these proposals. There is no support for these proposals in the country, and the debate so far has shown—

Mike Wood: Just as the offer of Lemsip is not totally convincing, nor are the Minister's reassurances to the probation service. We heard earlier that nobody disputes that the reoffending rate is high. It has been a problem ever since the probation service was instituted 100 years ago. However, the probation service is not the only responsible party. The Government should look at themselves and at some of their policies before they start casting around for somebody to blame for what they say, using phoney figures, is an unacceptably high rate of reoffending.
	On the evidence that I have adduced, what possible justification could there be to risk this success and to move to an untried and unwanted new system so soon after the introduction in 2003 of the national service and probation boards, which have not yet bedded in? Lord Ramsbotham pointed out how constant change endangers the morale of the service when he said on 3 November:
	"The service started life 100 years ago. Its raison d'être was very much the aftercare of offenders in the community; now it is told that its first priority is punishment. It was told that it was going to be a national service; then it was told that it was going to be merged with the Prison Service; then it was told that it was going back to being a county service; then it was told that it was going to be a regional service; and then it was told that parts of it were going to be privatised. It really does not know whether it is coming or going."—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 3 November 2006; Vol. 686, c. 555-56.]
	In my view, despite all that, the probation service is coping well, and therefore the Government obviously have a problem. As so many targets are being met, they have to undermine the service—notwithstanding what the Minister has just said—and doctor their own reoffending figures. How is the service being undermined? My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), who is no longer in the Chamber, mentioned a climate of fear. We see that when the uninformed media attacks that are made on the service are not met by any positive or supportive response from the Government. In fact, the Home Secretary—I am sorry that he has had to leave—recently felt it appropriate to agree with the producers of "Panorama" that community supervision should amount to 24 hours a day surveillance. How on earth could it?
	We can see no more shameful an example of the undermining of the service than the fact that the Home Secretary chose the inmates of Wormwood Scrubs to hear his views on the failings of the probation service. That was a calculated, gratuitous provocation designed to destroy the morale of the service, which his own figures prove is performing brilliantly.
	Because the figures are also a problem, they too have to be undermined and rubbished. Here, the term "dodgy dossier" comes to mind. Even accepting that there are lies, damned lies and statistics, not least in the field of crime and crime prevention, how can the Government make their case on reoffending only by cooking the books and contending that reoffending rates are the same for those with and those without the support of a probation officer?
	We know how the Government have done it: by conflating several sets of statistics and comparing like with not-like. In fact, the adjusted figures for reoffending by those on orders with the benefit of a probation officer is 44 per cent., compared with 58 per cent. for those without—or, if we are to believe a recent article in  The Times, 41 per cent. for those with the benefit of a probation officer and 66 for those without. Not only are the rates not the same, but there is a massive difference. A huge improvement is gained by those who have the benefit of a professionally trained probation officer.
	For months, the false figures have been given credence. Baroness Scotland, a junior Minister, even wrote to all Labour Members repeating them. I say that they are false figures not only because the Government figures are at variance with those provided by NAPO, of which, as the Minister mentioned, I am a former member, but because they have been ridiculed and challenged by the writers of  The Times article, leading academics and a considerable number of experts working in the field ever since they were first trotted out.
	I have great misgivings about the proposed legislation and the way in which it has been introduced. If the Government were really interested in reducing reoffending, without too much recourse to the mantra, "tough on the causes of crime", would they not be working with the probation service on, for example, the actions proposed in 2002 by the social exclusion unit as major ways of lessening reoffending? Should we not be examining sentencing policy, especially as it affects the 50,000 prisoners a year who serve short sentences—six months or less—with whom no work is done, either in prison or outside, and whose reoffending rate is in excess of 70 per cent.? The Government, rather than work to overcome that, have recently cancelled their custody-plus plans, which were aimed specifically at that problem.
	Should not the Government be working with the probation service on employment on release, which reduces the risk of reoffending by up to a half, or stable accommodation, which reduces it by up to 20 per cent.? Should they not be working on offenders' education, family contact and health care? Perhaps we might even get them to change tack and challenge the nonsense of "prison works", and instead follow the Scandinavian model of sending far fewer people to prison and spending far more on them—not because of some liberal over-identification with the offender, but to make a major contribution to reducing reoffending.
	A prison place costs taxpayers £37,500 a year. It costs between £2,000 and £8,000 for the same individual to be dealt with by a probation officer in the community. On those figures, probation is not only good sense, but good business sense. What makes no sense is to entrust probation clients, as varied and as difficult as they are, to those groups who have shown themselves to be incapable even of organising the catering and cleaning in probation offices.
	I end my speech with a few words from the Probation Boards Association, which says:
	"Running like a fault line through the Bill is the failure to recognise that the probation service is much more than the sum of the parts of these 'functions'"—
	it had previously listed the functions of the service. The PBA goes on to say that the probation service
	"is the glue which holds the criminal justice services together working as it does with every other agency involved in crime prevention, pre-court work, in court, during and post-sentence and life licence."
	The probation service has invaluable knowledge and expertise to share with local authorities, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, courts, prisons, those involved in the parole system and youth justice, health and education services and partners in the voluntary sector. Once the service is broken up, that will be irretrievably lost. That is what is at stake, and that is why we should resist the Bill in its totality.

David Davies: Following on from the speech by the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood), as the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe) is getting a bit of a mauling from hon. Members in his own party at the moment, he will no doubt be pleased to hear that the Member of Parliament described as the most right-wing in the House is about to ride to his rescue, partially, on the main proposals in the Bill. Before I do that, I must take him to task on clauses 24 and 25, which have not yet been mentioned today.
	The Minister may have to help me out, because I do not pretend to be an expert on the subject, but my understanding is that young offenders who are sentenced to between eight and 16 months in a young offenders institution are automatically released halfway through their sentence, but they will usually be released exactly one month before that halfway point is reached, provided that they conform with certain measures, which I think—I am not sure—include testing negative for drugs. Similarly, young offenders serving a sentence of more than 16 months will automatically be released halfway through their sentence, at the eight-month point, but if they conform to the requirements, they will be released exactly two months to the day before that halfway point.
	Clause 24 would remove the necessity on the prison governor to keep such offenders in prison until the halfway point, if they fail to meet those requirements. If I understand the provision, that is a retrograde step, because it means that more people will leave detention centres earlier. That is in contradiction to what the Government like to say that they are doing, which is keeping people in prison for longer. The fact that people are automatically released halfway through their sentence is a travesty of justice, but if the clause is agreed to, it will effectively be a get-out-of-jail-earlier card. Clause 25 gives me, and anyone who has been a victim of crime, even more concern, because it is a get-out-of-jail-free card—in fact, it is a do-not-even-go-to-jail card. Let us be truthful: very few people are sentenced to detention these days, particularly if they are young offenders. Usually, young offenders must have been convicted on many occasions of many different crimes before they face any sort of custodial sentence. However, even if a young offender is sentenced to detention by the judge, under clause 25, the authorities can send them not to a detention centre, but to what is described as an open children's home, and that is a gross injustice.
	Recently, I dealt with the case of an elderly lady who was burgled in her bungalow at night by a 17-year-old. She has suffered a life sentence because of that event—it has absolutely ruined her life. The person involved, who already had a string of convictions for house burglaries committed at night, was sentenced to slightly more than 16 months, but he will spend considerably less than that in detention. Had he been sentenced according to the provisions of clause 25, instead of serving six months in a detention centre—that is what he will get at present—he would not go to a detention centre at all. He would be whisked off to a comfortable children's home with all mod cons, and would not spend any time whatever in detention. Quite apart from the fact that that would not result in justice for the victims of crime, it will inevitably result in further crimes.
	I recently took part in the police parliamentary scheme, and I came into contact with a children's home—I do not want to say exactly where it is. One night, as we went out looking for someone who had walked out of that home, I was told by the police that there is absolutely nothing that the authorities can do to stop young people from walking out of that or any other children's home, even if the staff know that that young person is off to buy drugs, to commit further crimes, or even to prostitute themselves—and all those things are sadly all too common among the disturbed and unlucky children who find themselves in such homes.

Nick Hurd: One of the best and earliest decisions by the new Home Secretary was to scrap plans to reform Her Majesty's inspectorate of prisons, presumably on the basis of if ain't broke, don't fix it. I wish that the Home Secretary and his new team had spent more time pondering the other inheritance—that of the Offender Management Bill—simply to test how much value it adds to the fundamental challenge of reducing reoffending rates. Whether those rates are 60 per cent. or 40 per cent., they are too high. The statistics reek of failure and financial and human cost.
	We are discussing a fundamental reform of a service that is vital for public protection and is clearly under great pressure. I was struck by the number of people passing through the system. In 2005, 180,000 entered into probation service supervision and the number has grown by 30 per cent. since 1993. Is the service failing? The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) was passionate and eloquent about the fact that it meets most of its Government targets. However, the public perception is of failure, not helped by media treatment of some high profile, emotive and tragic events. There is also a feeling, which the hon. Members for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood) and for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) powerfully articulated, that matters are not helped by Government intervention and the Home Secretary.
	More important, the probation service is another public service that is subject to the culture of permanent reform. The previous reform took place four years ago. When I speak to representatives of the big public services—for example, those who run schools and hospitals—in my constituency, I am struck by the common sentiment of, "Leave us alone. Stop piling on additional reform before you let the last one bed in." That voice is being heard throughout the public services. Against that backdrop, the House should be tougher in pushing for hard evidence of the case for reform.
	Is the Bill worth further disrupting a vital public service? There is only one yardstick: how will the measure contribute to reducing reoffending, thus helping protect the public better? An enormous prize is attached to that, not only the financial prize, which runs into billions of pounds if reoffending is reduced by 5 or 10 per cent., but a massive human prize in helping more of our fellow citizens get their lives back on track.
	The issue does not appear to be about the principle of end-to-end management, which has hardly been debated this afternoon. The meat of the discussion is contestability—the principle or the threat of competition, which can be a powerful driver of change. As a Conservative who worked in business for 18 years before entering politics, I know full well the value of competition. I would normally support it because it focuses minds, raises standards of service and tends to drive down cost.
	I am also a passionate believer in the value that the third sector adds. I recently visited a prison in Bovingdon to see the Sycamore Tree project, and I was struck by the extent to which the service depends on volunteers. That project, which aims to bring offenders face to face with the consequences of their crimes, was enormously powerful.
	I need no lectures on the merits of competition or the value that the third sector can add. However, given the huge sensitivities about offender management and how we release back into the community people who might represent a risk to our fellow citizens, we must be sure that the Bill, which is highly centralist in driving increased fragmentation of the service, will make a difference.
	My question for the Minister and the Home Secretary is: where is the evidence? I have not heard any. I was very disappointed by the response to my question—that as 2 to 3 per cent. of the market is already subcontracted outside the public sector, in the private or voluntary sector, there ought to be a body of evidence that supports a causal link between increased competition and reduced offending. The fact that the Home Secretary could not come to the Dispatch Box and make that case with any robust data was extremely disappointing.
	In the absence of new evidence, one begins to listen to the voices of concern, which are out there on a very big scale. About 90 per cent. of responses to the public consultation opposed increased competition, a point made strongly by the hon. Member for Great Grimsby. The responses come from some very respectable sources. The chairman of the Probation Boards Association said that the overriding criterion was whether these proposals were likely to reduce reoffending. His contended that a multiplicity of providers being promoted in a confused marketplace and regional offender managers commissioning from the regional level and not the local level could only militate against the achievement of a reduction in reoffending.
	The Prison Reform Trust is concerned about local accountability and a move away from community solutions to crime prevention and resettlement. The Howard League for Penal Reform considers that the current proposals "sound the death knell" for a publicly accountable probation service.
	Usefully, the National Association of Probation Officers points to the maintenance of training standards. Today, apparently, it costs £70,000 to train in the probation service. That makes sense, given the need for qualifications and the high level of training. How can we be sure of maintaining those training standards in a more fragmented marketplace in which the private sector is more dominant? The Local Government Association warns that the new model would hamper local partnerships working together at a time when the Government appear to be encouraging just that.
	I am all for strong leadership in the face of opposition and dug-in vested interests, as long as it is supported by good, hard evidence. We have heard none today. In its absence, it is not encouraging that the Government's mind has changed so much in the past few years—although perhaps that is not surprising, given the revolving door at the Home Office.
	I come again to the National Association of Probation Officers. It pointed out in its criticism of the proposals that the Bill is a complete reversal of the Government's position in 1998 when in a consultation paper, "Joining Forces to Protect the Public", it recommended that the national probation service be established. At that time, the probation service was perceived, it said, as a fragmented organisation with only limited local accountability. The danger is that that is exactly what the Bill might reproduce.
	The case for reform and further disruption of a major public service has not been supported by evidence of a link between increased competition and reducing reoffending rates. The Bill reeks of centralisation, when one intuitively feels that the solutions are likely to be increasingly local. Personally, I regret the lack of emphasis on the bigger picture. There is an urgent need to make prison work more effectively for those inside it. That lack is particularly disappointing, given the excellent work done in 2002 by the Government's social exclusion unit in identifying the key factors that influence reoffending. Those pathways to support the rehabilitation of offenders include accommodation, education, training, employment, mental and physical health, drugs, alcohol, finance, benefits and debt, maintaining relationships with children and family, attitudes, thinking and behaviour.
	Since then, not enough has been done to make prison work more effectively. The Bill feels like a missed opportunity to get to grips with one of the most stubborn and unacceptable facts on the political landscape: two thirds of people who pass through our prisons will reoffend within two years. That statistic reeks of failure and carries with it a huge sense of waste—both of money and human lives.

Kerry McCarthy: Many other speakers have talked in detail about the impact of this legislation on the probation service and have expressed serious concerns, which I accept, about the involvement of the private sector in offender management. I hope that the House will forgive me if instead of concentrating on those points, I talk about the impact of the legislation on the voluntary sector organisations with which I have worked as a Member of Parliament during the past 18 months.
	I also want to talk about something that has not come up in the debate so far: the offenders themselves. We have talked about the structures, systems and details of the legislation, but not about the people out there whose lives will be affected by the changes—I hope for the better, although some Members will have different views. I want to talk about those people.
	My interest stems from when I spent several years working in the criminal justice system. I worked for a firm of legal aid solicitors, most of whose criminal clients were young offenders. Before that, I worked at a magistrates court, where I saw the same young men come before the courts time and again. If they were not in the dock themselves, they were usually at court anyway, as their mates or brothers were there.
	Turning up each day was a way of life for them. Each time they came back before the magistrate, their offences were more serious and their sentences became longer. They swiftly moved from being antisocial nuisances, to career criminals, to hardened convicts. Perhaps one or two of them stepped away from a life of crime after their second brush with the courts, but we could more or less guarantee that their first appearance would not be their last.
	In later years, when I had stopped working in the law, I would read reports of the same individuals in the local press. One had been found dead in a ditch in mysterious circumstances; another had died of a heroin overdose. Another had died from glue sniffing and yet another was in court for a bank robbery. It was clear that, whatever their experience of the criminal justice system—from cautions to convictions, from community sentences to custody—nothing had stopped them offending, and doing so in more and more serious ways as their lives progressed.
	No doubt, some would say that such prolific offenders will always be with us, that some are simply beyond help and that the best we can do is incapacitate them by locking them up for longer and longer periods. We heard some of that argument from the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) earlier. However, I argue that we cannot afford to give up on such offenders because the cost to society is too great. The social exclusion unit's report calculated that in 2003-04 the cost of reoffending was £11 billion—nearly a third of the total cost of crime, estimated at £36 billion.
	The Home Office estimates that 10 per cent. of active offenders are responsible for half of all crime. I have been told that in my local area there are 110 prolific offenders who generate 63 per cent. of acquisitive crime. Most, of course, have serious drug habits to feed. It is estimated that those offenders are responsible for about 25,000 crimes a year. Avon and Somerset police say that the socio-economic cost of each to the taxpayer is £225,000 a year, which includes the cost of their crime, policing, convicting them and trying to clear up some of the mess that they have caused.
	We have two alternatives for those 110 offenders: we could lock them up and throw away the key or make a serious attempt to rehabilitate some of them. Lots of figures have been bandied around in today's debate, and those for rehabilitation are not encouraging. Some 66 per cent. of those who serve a custodial sentence go on to reoffend, and 58 per cent. of offenders reoffend. Of most concern is the fact that up to 85 per cent. of young offenders go on to reoffend. The only conclusion that I can reach is that prison clearly does not work. It is also clear that in many instances the probation service does not work either; there are people whom the probation service has not been able to reach. They need a different kind of focus and structured, sometimes very intensive, support.
	That brings me to role of the voluntary sector, particularly that in Bristol, which has been doing excellent work with offenders and young people who are seen to be at risk of offending. There are organisations such as Restore, which engages with young people on a south Bristol housing estate, involving them in a furniture recycling project. Those young people are learning skills, being kept off the street and away from other young people in the community who are committing crime. That organisation does really good work. another organisation called Amber looks at offenders' education, training and employment needs. And there is one called RAPt, the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust, which provides a structured residential drug treatment programme for offenders.
	Research that RAPt commissioned from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies shows that two years after release, more than 50 per cent. of those who have graduated from the RAPt programme are still clean of drugs, compared to 20 per cent. who have not been through the programme. Only 16 per cent. of RAPt graduates have been reconvicted since their release, compared with 43 per cent. of non-graduates.
	Last month I hosted the parliamentary launch of Believe, an organisation that has worked with prolific offenders in Bristol for the past two years. I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) for speaking at the event. We heard from an ex-offender who had spent most of his adult life and much of his youth in custody. He spoke eloquently and passionately about the way in which his life had been transformed by support from Believe. He is now mentoring other offenders who have been released from custody more recently.
	Over the last two years Believe has worked with 150 offenders, half of whom are deemed to be prolific offenders who are almost 100 per cent. certain to reoffend. The organisation calculates that its work is currently preventing reoffending at a rate some 20 per cent. above what the probation service would achieve. It costs £5,000 a year to put an offender through Believe's programme. That should be taken in conjunction with the £225,000 figure given by Avon and Somerset police. Believe reckons that in the two years for which it has been in operation it has saved the taxpayer some £4 million, and it says that with more resources and wider partnership work—which the Bill will facilitate—it would be able to do much more.
	Why do I think that Believe could succeed where the probation service may have failed? I think that its success may be partly due to the fact that it works with offenders in a much more intensive and motivational way. It builds consistent, long-lasting and trusting relationships. Many of the offenders with whom I have dealt in the past know full well how to play the probation service. They see it as part of the establishment—something that ought to be challenged, tricked, conned and worked around. They do not have the same relationship with the people with whom they work in the voluntary sector.
	Another thing that voluntary organisations seem better placed to do is allow offenders themselves to play a part in determining strategies that would work for them as individuals. Rather than operating a set programme, such organisations have long discussions with offenders. They tolerate the occasional lapse. When they work in partnership, which is happening increasingly in Bristol, they can provide an integrated package of interventions and support dealing with addictions in prison and on release, accommodation and employment problems, family relationships, mental health and debt—all factors that contribute to the revolving-door lifestyle, which NOMS has already identified in its action plan as being particularly important.
	I mentioned family relationships. Over the past year or so, I have had some dealing with Action for Prisoners' Families, and I commend it for its work. I think most people would agree that an important element in the prevention of reoffending, particularly among those who have served short sentences, is the maintenance of a stable and secure family life to which offenders can return. If an offender's family has not disintegrated or turned its back on him, that will be a key factor in putting him back on the straight and narrow.
	I recently visited Ashfield young offenders' institution, which is just outside Bristol. I talked to very young men from broken homes, who were due to be released within the next two or three weeks and had nowhere to go. They did not even know which city they would be going to. Some had come from as far away as London. As for their family homes, they were the last places in the world where one would want them to go. If there were more organisations working with young offenders and giving them a helping hand when they leave such institutions, they would stand a better chance of not becoming involved in crime and not falling in with the wrong people again.
	Those who read the "Society" section of  The Guardian—I am sure that that now includes many Opposition Members—

Elfyn Llwyd: I do not welcome the Bill at all, but I do welcome much of what the hon. Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy) said about the work of the voluntary sector. My initial question is this: if we are to broaden the partnership between the probation service and the voluntary sector, do we need this Bill? I do not think that we do. The Minister referred to resettlement, but I am unsure whether we need the Bill for that either. Let me give him an example why. The National Assembly for Wales has made those who have just come out of prison the No. 1 priority in the allocation of public sector housing. That is not primary legislation; it is subordinate. Although I am talking about a part of the proposed legislation that I might be able to accept, I do not think that a justification for the Bill lies in the resettlement point, as that can be done by subordinate legislation in any case.
	I have another question: what do classroom assistants, police community support officers and voluntary bodies delivering legal advice have in common? The answer is that each of them is an attempt to provide a service on the cheap. If that is what the Bill seeks to do, its outcomes are doomed to failure. We heard from the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), among others, about the savings that are envisaged in the regulatory assessment—some £625 million. We also know that contestability is nothing short of privatisation.  [Interruption.] The Minister shakes his head, but I heard the Home Secretary talk earlier about more voluntary sector involvement. That is fine, and I dare say that every probation officer would be happy to have more involvement with the voluntary sector. What the Minister said in a recent intervention is right. It is also my experience that the voluntary sector is very professional and has a high degree of expertise, and that is all to the good, but people are gravely concerned that the large companies that are now involved in this area will sweep up the market.
	The key question is whether profit-making organisations deliver the best possible service—in the prison sector, I do not think so. I will not go on about that, although I could give plenty of examples. I shall, however, point out what has happened since the carriage of prisoners from prisons to Crown courts was privatised. In the old days, if a prisoner arrived an hour late, the judge would go spare and would ask to see the senior officer, and the senior officer would then report back to the prison, and that would not happen again. Let me tell Members what can happen nowadays, by recounting an experience that I had last year. A prisoner came half a day late to the Crown court, and the officer concerned would not even present himself in chambers to be questioned about what had happened. That is the level of accountability now in that area, and it is absolutely disgraceful. If the Bill is enacted in its present form, it will only make matters worse.
	There is another question that must be asked: why are the workers in public sector prisons not allowed to tender for some work on an equal footing with those in private organisations? I was told by the Home Secretary that there is no impediment, but, with respect, there is. I am not saying that the right hon. Gentleman meant to mislead, but I am putting on the record that there is such an impediment. That has been raised with me by the Prison Officers Association—by no less a person than Colin Moses, the chairman. Therefore, I ask that question.
	In common with many Members, I have over past months tabled reams of questions about the National Offender Management Service—about how it will pan out and how it will look on the ground. Half, if not three quarters, of those questions are unanswered, because we simply do not know. We are treading on dangerous ground, particularly with such a justice forum, as Ministers do not yet know how things will pan out.
	I listened intently to the comments of the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood). He has experience in this field, and he is greatly concerned about the evidential base for the legislation. I do not understand why probation boards have to be abolished and replaced by trusts. The Home Secretary said in opening the debate that the trusts will be made up of people from business. I am unsure whether people from business are aware of the needs and other issues involved in resettling criminals—in assisting their rehabilitation and so forth. People from business look at the bottom line—at the costs. I repeat what I said earlier: the measures under discussion cannot be implemented on the cheap, otherwise they will be doomed to failure from day one.

Elfyn Llwyd: I accept what the Minister says, but my understanding is that it will no longer be necessary for sentences, for example, to be a matter for trusts; they can be, but I would have thought that they jolly well should be a central and core element, in respect of both Crown court judges and lay magistrates alike. Departing from that could be a recipe for disaster.
	We know that there will be contracting out of probation services, and—to repeat something that the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) said—I am not averse to greater involvement of the voluntary sector, many of whose staff are experts and are well versed in many aspects of the work required. However, I do not see why we need such a wholesale series of measures as are in the Bill in order to achieve that.
	I cannot address the issue that we are discussing without raising sentencing policy. I echo something that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby said: we cannot discuss this issue without looking at what is currently happening in the prisons. The first question I pose is whether we, the inhabitants of the British isles, are so intrinsically bad that we must lock up many more people per capita than our European neighbours. Some might say so, but it is a serious and proper question to ask. It is especially apposite we have had prison overcrowding every year since 1994—that is according to Home Office figures. Over the past year, more than half of all prisons have been overcrowded—that is taken from the NOMS monthly bulletin from January.
	I recall serving on the Standing Committee of the Crime (Sentences) Bill in 1997—some 10 years ago. I said then that as a direct result of that proposed legislation there would be a substantial influx of new prisoners, and that if the Bill was to make any sense at all it would have to be matched by a large increase in prison places. To many Members at that time that seemed self-evident, but very little provision was made and the situation was, indeed, exacerbated by that legislation.

Elfyn Llwyd: I agree entirely. I have discussed the issue with prison officers, educators and members of the probation service, and all of them are in a state of flux. They do not have a clue what is happening. I mentioned earlier the many written parliamentary questions that have been tabled on this issue, a lot of which have been tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). We still do not know the answers to core questions about how NOMS will shape up. Heavens above—if those who actually work there are not told the answers, what hope is there for any kind of morale in the service? As the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) has just pointed out, it is absolutely vital and fundamental that rehabilitation be uppermost in one's mind when someone is in custody. That is the only way to turn such people around.
	There is a vast amount of work to be done, but NOMS—which is something of a fig leaf—and this Bill are not the answer. I hope that at some point we can deal with the following issues. First, can we not have an audit of all those in prison who should not be there? What about those with mental health or drug problems? After all is said and done, a drug addiction is an illness. It is not that such a person is intrinsically bad; they are suffering from an awful illness, and one exemplar of that illness is the criminality that feeds that habit. That is a terrible situation to be in, and we need to address the problem in a different way. We need to concentrate far more on assisting those people, so that they do not simply come out of prison and start again, thereby getting into an awful spiral—or stuck in the revolving door, as it has been referred to.
	There are some beacons of good practice. Altcourse prison, in Liverpool, has a very good course for taking people off drugs, and so on. I hope that we can reach a sensible position, ignore the tabloids and the less progressive elements who are shouting at we Members of Parliament from the sidelines —[Interruption.] Actually, they are not on the sidelines; they are just behind me. I hope that we can have a mature, grown-up and sensible debate, because that is what this important issue needs.
	I would point out to any member of the public who is listening that I am very much in favour of proper community penalties, which are cost-effective. They are a form of redress whereby the transgressor gives back to the transgressed, and they do work in dealing with reoffending.
	The Home Secretary said earlier that 5,000 extra probation officers have been engaged in the past five to seven years. According to Lord Ramsbotham,
	"there are 300 fewer officers and 1,500 more bureaucrats".
	I think it was the hon. Member for Batley and Spen who said that nobody seems to know what the NOMS bureaucrats are doing. I doubt whether they even have desks yet, let alone any tasks. They are no doubt being paid very well, but what they actually do nobody seems to know. Worse still, we do not know what they will be doing in future. This is change for change's sake. Lord Ramsbotham said the following about the Bill:
	"What would I do? It is difficult to know where to start but my first move would be to drop any move towards what is euphemistically called a national offender management service."
	I agree with that.
	The Lord Chief Justice, who recently posed as someone doing community service, has entered the debate. Perhaps more importantly, in a paper entitled "Alternatives to Custody—the Case for Community Sentencing", which was issued by Oxford university's centre for criminology, he said:
	"First and foremost we need the appropriate resources".
	Those very simple words actually mean that we need more fully trained probation officers on the ground. We need proper, structured, medium and long-term orders. They are not a soft option; they do work.
	When I was a young solicitor in the 1970s, there were three or four probation officers based in the local town. There is now one, based 40 miles away. That is a snapshot of where we are now. The hon. Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy) said that people often bond with representatives of the voluntary sector more than with probation officers. Well, if one person has to cover such a vast area of north Wales, with all the hours of travelling that involves, I am not surprised that she is less available to advise and befriend those on probation.
	I recently attended a conference held by the Coalition on Social and Criminal Justice, which wholeheartedly endorsed more use of community penalties and, in particular, the local partnership approach, bringing in social services, the probation service, the health service and magistrates. That is a helpful contribution to the debate. Unfortunately, however, there will be no requirement to have magistrates on the new trusts. If the Bill has to become law—I would prefer it not to—I hope that the Government will consider how fundamentally important it is for sentences, in the magistrates and Crown courts, to be an integral part of the system. However, any movement in that area presupposes more investment in properly trained probation officers. I will not dwell on the Scottish model as it has already been mentioned, but it seems to be working. It involves a statutory duty for the services to work together and consult. I have no objection to that.
	As a young, idealistic lawyer in the 1970s, I came across young people who offended time after time. I also defended some who had offended once or twice and were at a crossroads in their lives. I saw firsthand dedicated probation officers working with them. I sometimes meet those ex-offenders, now respected members of the community and proud parents and grandparents who hold down good jobs and serve on town and community councils. I shudder to think what would have happened to them if they had offended now and not then. Would they have gone straight into a young offenders institution? Would they have taken the wrong turn at that crossroads in their lives? Sadly, I think that the answer is yes, but it gives me no pleasure to say so.

John Grogan: It is a pleasure to follow the thoughtful, careful and expert analysis of the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd), but the key point in the debate came when the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) spoke from the Opposition Front Bench. As he went through his critique of the centralisation that the Bill would involve, he had the rapt attention of no fewer than four Government Whips. The tension visibly drained from the Chamber as he announced that the Opposition would not oppose the Bill tonight. The day of reckoning for the Bill has therefore been postponed, but—in accordance with the spirit of Christmas—I wish to offer a few thoughts to my hon. Friends on the Front Bench on how we could be more united on the Bill by Report. It would certainly be good if the House of Commons could resolve the issue instead of sending it on to the other place.
	The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe) is not in his place at present, but I am keen to reach an accommodation with him especially as we share many core beliefs, not least in our football team, Bradford City, and our candidate for the deputy leadership. I therefore speak tonight in a spirit of good will.
	The Bill has wider implications than just the probation service. It is all about the Government's interaction with the private sector and the involvement of the private and voluntary sectors in the provision of public services. The Bill is so radical in its intent and scope that it disturbs many of the established principles that the Government have proclaimed in that area. My hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood) said that what matters is what works, which was originally said by Lord Kinnock, when he was leader of the Labour party. We have moved a long way from that in the Bill. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary referred to a gradualist approach, but there is nothing gradual about the Bill. The parliamentary Labour party briefing stresses that no less than £250 million of expenditure on probation will be put out to contestability within 15 months—in the financial year beginning in 2008. That is a lot of money.
	The second principle—that of localism—that has so far influenced the Government's commissioning of the voluntary and private sectors has been removed from the Bill. That is in contrast with what is happening in the health service, for which Lord Warner has recently said that decisions on commissioning private services should be made at a local level, because local accountability is important. That would not be the case for the probation service, for which the principle seems to be that the man from Whitehall and the regional commissioners know best.
	The third principle is the inclusion of charities and the voluntary sector. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy) spoke movingly and with great conviction about the importance of that role. It has been interesting to note that whenever in doubt my hon. Friend the Minister intervenes, as he has done on at least three occasions, to ask whether the hon. Member concerned can possibly be opposed to involving NACRO, Turning Point and Shelter—that is his usual trio—in the provision of public services. He never mentions Serco, which is by far the dominant provider in the prison sector and probably in the probation sector. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Minister is now in his place again.
	It is interesting that some parts of the voluntary sector have been more critical of the Bill than NACRO, Turning Point and Shelter. For example, the YMCA has said that the Bill has
	"a narrow vision of the voluntary sector. The Bill simply places the sector alongside others for services to be merely transferred, neglecting the particular contribution that a voluntary relationship has on preventing re-offending."
	Pete Crossley, who is YMCA England's prisons unit director, echoing the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East, said:
	"If charities are allowed to offer optional support services, the chances of rehabilitation are far greater. This is because the relationship between the charity and the young offender is one which both have chosen. Take away the voluntary element and you remove an important degree of trust which could be disastrous for the charity's effectiveness."
	The briefing continues:
	"If the sector"—
	that is, the voluntary sector—
	"is merely seen as an alternative provider of public services the Government will overlook the distinctive characteristics of both sectors. The voluntary sector cannot absorb the state's responsibility for public protection."
	That is a valid point.
	The Probation Boards Association makes some similar observations. It says:
	"Complex contractual arrangements go against the government Compact with the voluntary sector. A contract culture can be restrictive, creating boundaries and constraints and may alter the voluntary sector culture of commitment and innovation."
	In other words, if we are to preserve the innovation of the voluntary sector, we cannot have it replacing large chunks of the core probation service, because that risks losing the added value that it brings.
	I have mentioned Serco and we should be sceptical about exactly what such non-specialist firms can bring to the public services. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that certain public services can also be criticised, but within the past few weeks Serco's press record on the public services in which it is involved shows that it has been criticised for the closure of leisure centres in Leyland, because of widespread poisoning; in Walsall for the disappearance of £850,000 without proper audit, according to the internal audit service; in Cornwall for the near collapse of the out-of-hours health service; in Doncaster by the chief inspector of prisons for providing a squalid service; and in Bradford for missing 50 per cent. of its targets. Given that Serco is the major firm trying to grasp, or take over, a large proportion of the probation service, a greater degree of scepticism from Ministers is probably called for.
	Finally, the fourth principle to which new Labour has held while developing voluntary and private sector participation is that there should be a core public service. It has been assumed that the state would continue to make some direct provision. Ministers have said that they envisage only 10 per cent. of health services being put out to the private sector, but there is no limit in terms of the probation service. It costs £70,000 to train a probation officer, for example, and there is a cavalier attitude to what might happen to training in the probation service; but a substantial core public service element is vital to maintaining professional standards in any public service. Earlier this year, Lord Browne, the chairman of BP, said that pseudo-markets risk damaging the professional ethos in academic institutions, hospitals and jails, which should give us at least pause for thought.
	I began my speech in the absence of the Minister, but I am pleased that he has now returned to the Chamber. In the spirit of Christmas, I have been trying to suggest changes to the Bill so that it will command the support of the House when it returns here, probably in February. I very much doubt that it can command such support at present. Those changes would be based on a more localist approach, with more local commissioning, and wider recognition that the value of the core function of the probation service is irreducible. If we were to proceed along those lines, a majority could be commanded; if not, I suspect that the Bill will have a rough ride on Report and in the other place.

David Howarth: I am saying that there is sufficient room for change within the legislative framework as it stands. My problem with the Bill, as with many Bills, is that I cannot quite understand what it is for, except to be some kind of Government press release. I wish that the Government would not use the House as a way to issue press releases. They should issue press releases through their press office, not on the Floor of the House.
	The other basic principle that should be raised—this is why my hon. Friends are against the Bill in principle, not just against its practicalities—is the centralisation that it involves. It means the end of a system of local accountability. It involves the introduction of a system whereby the Home Secretary decides the whole system. Yes, that might be done through regional managers, but it involves a management system, not an accountability system. With all power given to the Home Secretary, not only has he the power to reorganise the service at will, but there is no need, as far as I can see, for him ever to return to the House to ask for any further authorisation to make any further change.
	One reason to oppose the Bill is that this could be the last time that we discuss the probation service on the Floor of the House, because legislation will not be needed in future to change the way in which the service works. What might that mean? The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) made a number of points that I did not agree with, but one of them made me prick up my ears: he said that, under the Bill, the Home Secretary could bring in faith groups to take over large parts of the service. The powers that we are giving the Home Secretary are so great that he could do that using the Bill. I would want further legislative discussion in the House before any such dramatic change in policy were to happen.
	There has been a lot of discussion about reoffending. The hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup said that the problem is that we do not know what works and that there is a fear that nothing works. In fact, the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd), quoted the social exclusion unit study from a few years ago that showed what worked and what factors tended to help people stop reoffending. They were things such as having stable accommodation, attending to their mental health and to their addictions and ensuring that they had stable relationships. We do know about such things, and we do know what works. However, we also know that the 50,000 people on very short sentences—those of six months or less—have absolutely nothing done for them at all.
	The obvious coincidence in the Home Secretary's speech should be acted upon: he said that we have the highest imprisonment rates in Europe—not quite if they are counted one way, but certainly if they are counted another way—and the highest recidivism rates. It seems to me that that is no coincidence at all, and we should ask ourselves whether we should be talking about not changing the probation service's management system but introducing an entirely different approach to criminal justice in the first place.
	I suppose that all this comes down to three points. First, let us give the present system a fair trial. We have only just reformed it. Further change and disruption will do no good and will certainly not help to fill those 1,000 vacancies. Secondly, this is a dangerous precedent. We are giving far too much power to the Home Secretary in the Bill, and we should not do that. Thirdly, this is the thin end of the wedge. It is quite possible under the Bill for a core service to be privatised without any obvious benefit to the public in ways that no hon. Member would agree with. I urge the House to reject the Bill.

Humfrey Malins: I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Minister and the House for missing a great deal of the debate. That was due to absolutely unavoidable earlier commitments and no disrespect was intended. However, I have had the privilege of listening to several speeches—I have been pleased to do so.
	I begin by declaring an interest. I practised as a lawyer for many years in Surrey in the criminal courts. For the past 14 years, I have sat part-time as a Crown court recorder. I was a metropolitan stipendiary magistrate and am now a district judge. I am thus familiar with the probation service and I echo many hon. Members by saying that I admire the service greatly.
	In my early years in Surrey, we looked up enormously to the probation officers who served the county. Michael Varah was a distinguished head of probation in the county and Peter Sturge was a distinguished probation officer who was honoured. Indeed, my dear wife, Lynda, was partly involved in setting up community service in Surrey all those years ago. That since became community punishment and is now unpaid work, but it boils down to the same thing.
	I do not have much to say tonight. I want to talk not about the general principles of the Bill, but a couple of matters that worry me very much. I hope that the Minister will take what I say on board.
	From my experience, the probation service is very stretched. There are fewer probation officers than there were in Greater London, which is where I sit. When I asked a parliamentary question on the matter in June, I was told that there were 874 probation officers in the area covered by the Greater London magistrates courts in the second quarter of 2004-05. By the first quarter of 2005-06, that number had dropped by more than 50 to 820, and I do not think that the situation is getting much better.
	The probation service works very hard indeed, but if one sits as a district judge, one sees day after day the strains and stresses on it. We must address that situation very strongly. Not long ago, I was in court in south-east London. We had ordered a probation report—a pre-sentence report—on a defendant. The report that I received from the probation service read:
	"I'm afraid that because of staff shortages I have not had time to prepare a report on this man. I must add that because of those shortages there is no realistic prospect of our producing any report in the course of the foreseeable future."
	I had to sentence with the knowledge that there would not be a report, which was a pity.
	As a result of the fact that the probation service is stretched, there has been a slight drop in morale. We live in a complex world. New sentences are introduced year after year, and they require the intervention and work of the probation service. Many years ago, there was a standard probation order. Indeed, much of the work of the service was carried out by the police officer in the towns in which there were courts. That officer would probably present the case to the court and give his or her version of the defendant's history—he or she would probably have known the family well. That process made it easier for the court to pass sentence. However, life has become more complex, especially in the courts around London in which I sit.
	Is the Minister aware of the pressure that the probation service is under? Whatever else the Government do with the probation service, does he think that it is likely that they will be able to ensure that, over the course of the next year or two, there will be more probation officers in post who can produce reports than there are at present? In a court centre in London, if five courts are active all morning, with 30, 40, 50 or 60 defendants who need sentencing in each, difficulties are caused if there is only one probation officer between those courts, with huge delays as a result.
	The problems of pressure and the service being stretched have not become easier. Indeed, I venture to suggest that since the Criminal Justice Act 2003 was passed, the burdens on the probation service have become heavier. Section 177 of that Act introduced the community order, which is the new form of sentence for defendants that is, by and large, supervised by the probation service. I say straight away to the Minister that aspects of the new community order are good, but they need strong back-up.

Humfrey Malins: My hon. and learned Friend brings up yet another section of the 2003 Act. We could spend the whole evening going through sections of legislation that have not been introduced. What a brilliant intervention. To be frank, I had missed that section in my excitement over the others. Intermittent custody, set out in section 183—what on earth has happened to it? It was a terrific idea at the time, but is now not available in practice where I sit.
	The problems are overstretch and shortage of money. The Minister must in his reply deal with the overstretch in the probation service, the funding position and the number of probation officers. I would like from him today an absolute commitment on when those various provisions, so heralded as the answer to everything three or more years ago, will come into force. He will, I hope, give us a day or a month when that will happen, because the judiciary and the courts, not to mention defendants, would like to know.
	I have a final tip for the Minister, which I hope he will take on board. There is one way in which the burdens on the probation service can be lessened. He will know that in the community penalty provision in the 2003 Act there is a very important measure, namely, a community order with a drug rehabilitation requirement—the DRR. There will be other opportunities, so I shall not spend time this evening going into the tragic backgrounds of so many defendants in our courts who are addicted to heroin or crack, having started on the gateway drug, cannabis. By the time they are 17 or 18, they steal—they cannot help doing so—to feed their habit. By the time they are 25 or 26, they are ruined specimens: they look twice or three times their age, they shake and they can barely speak, and it is heroin that has done it. What is to be done with them?
	The DRR introduced by the 2003 Act is beginning to operate, not least in a couple of the drugs courts that we have in this country. I shall talk about those on another occasion. Under a DRR order, the defendant is required to submit to testing and sometimes to enter an institution for treatment. I feel very strongly that the DRR order is a tougher version of the drug treatment and testing order, which was introduced and then abandoned because it failed. Some Opposition members, myself included, feel that the DRR may make some progress. It is an order that the defendant stay off drugs and submit himself to treatment, counselling, advice and all the rest of it.
	My message to the Minister is that it is time that we got involved to a far greater extent the drug charities, which are committed and expert and which provide excellent drug programmes. Examples include the crack day programme, the Blenheim project, Druglink and Drugline. They are private charitable bodies that, by definition, have nothing to do with the state, they are terrific, and they are available to the courts. The judge could say, "Stand up, Smith. You are given a DRR. You will go to Druglink on a day course. You will do this. You will do that."
	I do not think that all the staff of the probation service are properly qualified to supervise a drug addict. Some are, but some are not. Some expertise is required. I believe that it is time that we all realised that drugs are such a terrible thing in our country, especially for young people, that the more expert the advice and supervision that can be given to defendants given a DRR, the better. Why not gradually phase the probation service out of drug supervision and give that function to those wonderful private charities that are so well placed to supervise addicts. We would win both ways: there would be fewer burdens on the probation service and a much better chance of the defendant receiving the benefit of expertise.
	I have spoken too long offering a few passing thoughts, which I summarise in one sentence. Bills are one thing, but what happens out there in the real world is terribly important. Great though the probation service is, the shortage of money, its staff's morale and the burdens on them are matters that the Minister will have to watch as closely as he can.

David Drew: I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove), whose arguments I followed closely. I would adhere to many of them, but I am bit less charitable as regards the direction in which the Bill takes us. My hon. Friend the Minister, who is a good trade unionist, has tried hard to deal with the many fears that my hon. Friends have expressed. I give him 10 out of 10 for trying, but we are yet to be convinced.
	I apologise for having come in and out of the Chamber during the debate, but I think that it has three key points. First, there is the role of the voluntary sector. I am pleased that the voluntary sector wishes to engage with this process, but I am surprised that it thinks that it is being given a role that it could not already be playing. In my own county, it already plays a major role in the relationship with professional and statutory organisations in the field of criminal justice. What does it want to do that it could not sign up to already?

David Drew: I hear what my hon. Friend says. Statutory underpinning of what organisations can be asked to do makes a difference. They will be held to account—that happens already through the contractual and compliance arrangements that we ask many voluntary sector organisations to undertake. My fear is that the voluntary sector, which is already involved, could try to do even more, and, if it fails, we are left in the unpalatable position of deciding who will fill the vacuum.
	In those circumstances, we could go back to the public sector but Governments of both parties do not have a great history of reverting to the public sector when other agencies fail. I wish it were otherwise. One example is the railways—perhaps we will learn our lessons and one day get back to proper public ownership. However, we are left with a genuine dilemma: if the voluntary sector took on some of the responsibilities and subsequently failed, it is obvious who would want to fill the vacuum. I want to warn the voluntary sector that it should not be seduced into believing that it can accept such responsibilities because, if it fails, we all suffer. The Government have to persuade the likes of me that there is no real danger of following that route.
	The two main points have already been considered at length so I shall not take up hon. Members' time for more than a few minutes to labour them. However, it is important to stress them because some of us have considerable misgivings about where we are going with the Bill.
	The first anxiety is loss of local accountability. By chance, two weeks ago, I attended a meeting of the criminal justice team in Gloucestershire. It was an important meeting because all the different agencies and a good number of Members of Parliament were there. However, we were faced by the problem that the court system will no longer be on a county basis because it will link with Wiltshire and Avon. It will therefore have no special locus standi in Gloucestershire. The police were at the meeting and, in a sense, they won the battle to remain a county force, but they are subject to a probationary period to ascertain whether their level 2 policing requirement can be fulfilled at county level. One cannot, therefore, feel assured that the police will remain at the level of location that some of us want.
	The probation service will form some sort of at least regional organisation. Our criminal justice team in Gloucestershire has not been an unalloyed success until comparatively recently. However, our recent record on offending rates—and, dare I say it, reoffending rates—has been reasonably successful. As other colleagues who also have misgivings said, if it ain't broke, why are we trying to fix it? We have fixed matters rather well and it is disillusioning when people who have made things work are told, "Thanks a lot, but we're bringing in the new team."
	The most galling aspect has been seeing the views of my friends who work for the probation service change. They began by being supportive of many things that the Government have done and the money that has been put in, and to watch that view change to downright hostility has been shocking. It is hard to share time with those people when they feel that they have been sold down the river. It will take much time, notwithstanding the Bill, to rebuild some of the bridges. They certainly need to be rebuilt.
	Those of us who have difficulties with the Bill feel most strongly about the second point, which is contestability. I wish that there were a charitable explanation and that the reason for it was trying to find other organisations that could work in partnership. I have said that the voluntary sector could already do the things that we want it to do. Why do we want it to do more? The idea of partnership is well ensconced. There must be partnership because the state sector has always acknowledged that it cannot deliver alone the sort of criminal justice system that we want. However, we come back to contestability. There are many ways in which we could describe it, for example, outsourcing.

Madeleine Moon: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; I was about to acknowledge that point, and to say that it had given me confidence about the proposals in the Bill.
	Regulation and inspection will play a critical part in the monitoring of the new providers entering the field following this Bill. It is equally clear that contract specifications will have to set out the tasks, training, outcomes and partnership expectations for the new providers and I am especially pleased to have had those reassurances.
	I had been concerned by statements in the briefings that hon. Members have received from NAPO, in particular its fears about clause 8 and that the inspectorate for the probation market, if implemented, will become overly bureaucratic and will find its job extremely difficult when trying to inspect multiple suppliers. However, the inspection of multiple suppliers is a task carried out successfully by the Commission for Social Care Inspection and by the Care Standards Inspectorate for Wales every day. I fail to see why the inspectorate for the probation market should not also be able to carry out that task.
	We need to have a rigorous system for the registration of, and contracting with, providers seeking to move into this area. We also need systems to monitor, inspect and remove failing providers, operating to clearly established standards and outcomes.

Madeleine Moon: I intend to address that point in a moment, if my hon. Friend will bear with me.
	The Bill aims to open up the monopoly of probation to new ideas and thinking, in a partnership of equals. I have grave concerns about the claims by NAPO that police and prison services will be unwilling to co-operate if multiple supervision is introduced or if private sector companies become involved in the supervision of high risk offenders. I would welcome a response from my hon. Friend the Minister on the likelihood of the police being unwilling to co-operate in working with the private sector. That suggestion must be addressed.
	I cannot agree that this Bill will result in chaos, less co-operation, silo mentalities, and an overly bureaucratic and impossible to manage system. In my constituency, I have Parc prison, which is managed by Group 4. I acknowledge that in its initial years the prison had problems, but there are state sector prisons that have had problems for many years. I now see, especially in the Parc supporting families group, good examples of partnership working between the police, prison staff, the probation service, the local authority and the voluntary sector. In setting up our new relationships with the private sector, we may have to be absolutely clear about our expectations for the operation of partnerships and the production of the outcomes we want.
	Success is possible and we can demonstrate it. In particular, I welcome the commitment to slow implementation of the proposed changes. If the pace of change is slow, there will be time for the changes to bed in and for the problems to be solved. I welcome the commitment to training, regulation and inspection. I welcome the voluntary sector's innovation and creativity in offender management. As the Bill progresses, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to address the anxieties of the probation service and the fears about the erosion of local accountability. Let us hope that through the Bill we will better serve the persistent reoffenders whom the present system is not best serving.

James Brokenshire: No, we certainly do not wish to scrap that scheme. It is interesting, however, that the Minister does not rise to talk about the Human Rights Act, which I mentioned, or the need for additional steps to be taken by his Department to ensure that officials interpret it correctly rather than put the public under threat.
	Launching the Bill, the Minister said in a Home Office press release of 23 November 2006:
	"This Bill is about the delivery of services necessary to stop offenders committing further crimes",
	yet it is completely silent on the much-vaunted National Offender Management Service, which is supposed to be co-ordinating the end-to-end management of offenders and helping to facilitate the changes necessary to protect the public and reduce rates of reoffending. The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) highlighted the lack of certainty about the role of NOMS, in spite of all the questions that he put to the Home Office. The lack of proper answers and the lack of a proper statutory footing pose many questions, which have certainly not been answered in this evening's debate.
	There has been a lot of debate this evening about the issue of contestability or the role of the private sector and the third sector in the provision of probation services. Conservative Members have no fundamental objection to giving contracts to non-state organisations for the running of facilities and services, provided they are within a clear and robust framework, a model to deliver sustained improvements and a structure that best meets local needs. However, the top-down centralised structure proposed by the Government would appear actively to militate against a system capable of reflecting the needs and requirements of specific localities and against ensuring the provision of services to small charities. It is also difficult to see how the Government's proposed system would promote and strengthen much-needed multi-agency partnership working to ensure that outcomes improve. It was interesting to hear the Home Secretary emphasise his desire to break up monopolies, as he seems to want to entrench an almost monopolistic power for himself.
	In any contractual framework, it is essential to have consistency and continuity, as was argued by the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth). It is also vital for faith groups, small charities, employers and others to have a stable local partner to which they can anchor, but given that there is no assurance that probation trusts will even remain in existence, it is unclear how they can provide such continuity. It would be absurd to think that regional offender managers could fulfil that role.
	We have already mentioned the problem of the lack of a business plan and the lack of evidence needed to support the Government's provisions. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) raised that point and also rightly emphasised the need for partnership working in the community and the essential work that he has seen from the involvement of various charitable sectors in his field. That point was also taken up by the hon. Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy) in her contribution. She drew on the experience of local groups, and it certainly sounded as though they were undertaking very valuable and important work in her community.
	The debate leads us to conclude that the structure is short on detail and lacking in planning and clarity and that opaqueness is increasing in the system. Who will be responsible? The Bill is more about blurring the lines of accountability. There is perhaps the suggestion that the intention is to blur the lines when trying to find out who is to blame when things go wrong. Rather than sharing responsibility, as we would wish, the Bill gives the impression of creating more deniability than contestability. We have focused very closely on that aspect of the Bill, but there are other important provisions that deal with the management of offenders while in custody.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) highlighted some of his concerns about the handling of young offenders and the operation of early release arrangements. Those points were powerfully put, and I am sure that we will return to some of those important issues later in the Bill's progress. My hon. Friend also made some important points on the need for vocational training and basic skills in the prison environment, particularly in the context of short sentences—a point that was further developed by my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley).
	The Bill provides the opportunity to draw together and harness the strengths and skills of the public, voluntary and private sectors in the delivery of a strong and cohesive probation service—a service that has the protection of the public at its heart, that promotes the partnership working needed to deliver long-term reductions in reoffending and that can play its part in the end-to-end management of criminals in the justice system, which we would all like to be achieved. However, we believe that the Bill in its current form fails to meet those objectives properly, and we will use the debates in Committee and on Report to put those priorities at the forefront, to ensure that the needs and aspirations of public are addressed by clear, robust and deliverable proposals.
	We give the Bill our conditional support, but that support is predicated on the basis that the Government listen to the serious and considered criticisms that have been made of their proposals and act to address the abundant problems that have been exposed already. If changes are not made, if sketchy details are not fleshed out and if macho posturing gets in the way of serious reflection on the weaknesses and failures inherent in their plans, the proper needs and demands of the public will have been ignored. In those circumstances, we will have no hesitation in rejecting the Bill.

Edward Garnier: The Minister needs to be a little careful, because he was not there. I was, and I remember precisely what I said. I said that, since we had not seen the Bill, it was going to be rather difficult to form an opinion then. We have since seen it and since the Government so desperately need our help—he has only to look behind him—he had better not be too rude, otherwise he might lose it.

Gerry Sutcliffe: The hon. Gentleman should calm down. The Liberal Democrat position is clear. They oppose the Bill for the reasons that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) said, but their answer was to throw more money at the situation, when that clearly does not work.

Mr. Speaker: If it is convenient to the House, I shall take Orders 6, 7, 8 and 9 together.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No 118(6)(Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

That Mr Shailesh Vara be discharged from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and Mr Geoffrey Cox be added .—[ Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

Iain Wright: I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise the issue of the future of maternity and paediatric services in Hartlepool and Teesside, which also takes into account the future shape, sustainability and viability of the university hospital of Hartlepool.
	I wish at the outset to pay tribute to the staff of the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust. They have delivered a first class service to patients over the past few years, with ongoing uncertainty regarding the services, their location and the finances of the trust. I know that only too well. In the past eight months, they have provided me and my family with a professional level of care following my grandmother's death at the hospital on 20 April and eight days later, when my 12-year-old son suffered a stroke. All the health professionals working in the trust are a real credit to the NHS and the local area and must be supported as much as possible.
	If my hon. Friend the Minister is expecting some sort of diatribe, as often happens in these circumstances, or me to argue that the hospital should not change but should deliver the same services, at the same site and in the same way as it always has done, he will be disappointed. I fully recognise and accept the drivers that are pushing the Government towards the reconfiguration of hospital services. Thanks to rapidly accelerating medical technology, tests and procedures that in the past would have had to have been done in a specialist centre can now be done in the local community. Professor Sir Ara Darzi illustrated that vividly in the presentation of his report on acute services in Teesside in July 2005. He said that 15 to 20 years ago cataract removals would have involved a lengthy stay at a specialist eye infirmary. Now, he claimed somewhat flippantly, the procedure can be done in a mobile unit in a Tesco car park. Operations that often meant a stay in hospital of several days or even weeks can now be treated as day cases.
	I also understand that in order to receive the best specialist care available it is often necessary to be treated in bigger, more specialised hospitals. In such places, consultants are able to see larger numbers of patients, which in turn means that they can become cutting-edge specialists, working with the latest equipment and highly trained and experienced staff. I am also aware that people want to receive care as close to their home as possible. People, rightly, are more demanding in all aspects of life, including their health care, and want reduced waiting times and more choice about when, where and how they are treated. I am keen to see those trends develop and accelerate. I want to see continuing advances in medical technology provide a revolution in health care, so that treatments hitherto thought possible only in hospital, such as chemotherapy, can be provided in the community or in a patient's home.
	Professor Darzi, in his review of acute services in Teesside, was able to address those long-term challenges in a highly skilled way. He was extremely sensitive to local nuances—appreciative, for example, of strong and proud differences between the towns of Teesside. He was also aware of the "sucking-in" of specialist services over a number of years from north of the Tees to the James Cook university hospital in the south of the area. That has had the effect of destabilising services provided at both university hospitals at North Tees and Hartlepool through the removal of some key clinical interdependencies which have contributed to the pressures on waiting time targets at James Cook.
	The number of cancelled operations at James Cook over the past few years has been acknowledged by the hospital's NHS trust—South Tees—as demonstrating
	"the difficulties the Trust has in coping with the high level of activity on the James Cook Hospital site."
	Professor Darzi devised a service model that addressed those difficult challenges. He recommended that the university hospital of Hartlepool should continue to provide a consultant-led accident and emergency service and acute medicine. It should also host a new centre of excellence in women's and children's services, including consultant-led maternity and paediatric services, gynaecology and breast surgery. The hospital should increase its in-patient elective surgery portfolio, particularly in orthopaedics. Major trauma and emergency surgery out of hours should move to North Tees. For its part, the university hospital of North Tees should become the main centre north of the Tees for emergency surgery, with expanded intensive care facilities. The site should continue to provide a full accident and emergency service and acute medicine.
	North Tees should develop as a centre for major complex surgery, including hosting a new North Tees complex surgical centre providing upper gastro-intestinal cancer services for the whole Teesside area. It was also recommended that vascular surgery should be developed at North Tees as part of a clinical network with the James Cook university hospital.
	Under Darzi's model, each hospital would become a regional centre of excellence, able to recruit and retain staff of the highest calibre, thereby providing the best possible standard of care.

Dari Taylor: Does my hon. Friend accept that if the Darzi report was implemented, as he is suggesting to the House, women and children from my constituency would face a journey four times greater than they face at present? In the main, they would have to go to Middlesbrough before they could go to Hartlepool, so in practice, they will stop in Middlesbrough and go to the James Cook hospital, thus not attending Hartlepool university hospital. The throughput of patients at Hartlepool will be significantly less, which will threaten a new department; indeed, it will close a department while North Tees has already lost an excellent gynaecology and paediatrics department.

Iain Wright: I appreciate and respect my hon. Friend's comments, but I disagree with them. I hope to speak about the element of choice, which is a central plank in the Government's manifesto on health policy. The degree of choice for my constituents is somewhat different compared to that for my hon. Friend's constituents.
	Under Darzi's recommendations, some services would migrate from the James Cook site to the university hospitals of North Tees and Hartlepool and to the Friarage hospital in Northallerton, thereby freeing up capacity at James Cook and enabling the hospital to achieve its waiting time targets. The model—crucially, in my opinion—provides the Hartlepool and North Tees hospitals with a sustainable future by offering distinct specialisms. With everybody giving a little, everybody in Teesside wins.
	However, the recent referral of maternity and paediatric services in Teesside to the independent reconfiguration panel undermines the work of Darzi and a sustainable future for all the hospitals. His recommendations are interdependent and relate to one another. It would be difficult to unravel one piece without undermining the whole thing. If Hartlepool does not achieve status as a centre of excellence for women's and children's services, will my hon. Friend the Minister tell us whether, in terms of acute hospital services in the Teesside area, everything is now up for grabs? Does it mean that Hartlepool could conceivably become the site for complex surgery? Does it mean yet another review—the third or fourth in five years? Such questions and uncertainties make it clear to me that Darzi needs to be implemented as it stands, in full.
	The specific configuration of services recommended by Darzi appears sensible, appropriate and responsive to local needs, both now and in the future. A significant increase in the number of older people in Hartlepool is forecast in the next few years: a rise of about 25 per cent. by 2021. People over the age of 60 will constitute more than 15 per cent. of the total population of Hartlepool. That demographic change will have a profound impact on the design and delivery of public services, particularly health and social care provision. The higher proportion of older people will mean a greater need for the co-ordinated configuration of planned and emergency surgery, with elective surgery a major part of Hartlepool hospital's work, while it will still, rightly, have access to a full consultant-led A and E service and an emergency surgical option. That is why the full implementation of Darzi's recommendations is so important.

Frank Cook: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. Darzi's remit was specifically to do "whatever is necessary" to preserve the Hartlepool hospital and his suggestions were numerous and widespread. His report cannot be implemented fully, contrary to what my hon. Friend wants, because the James Cook university hospital in south Tees has said that it is not having it, that it is not going to happen and that it should go away. Full implementation simply cannot happen.
	The maternity, gynaecology and obstetric department is a centre of excellence. It was opened by the Prime Minister, accompanied by his wife, in 1999. It has been very successful in North Tees and we want to keep it there. It has been successful for one reason—because acute emergency surgery services are based there, which Hartlepool does not have. If we take one away from the other, neither is good. Yet we still have emergency surgery. I plead with my hon. Friend—I use the term "friend" advisedly of my Hartlepool comrade—to think in terms of primary care being based in health centres, secondary care in North Tees at the Hartlepool general and tertiary care in a brand new hospital in eight to 10 years' time. I will attend when my hon. Friend opens it.

Iain Wright: I am grateful for that suggestion, but my hon. Friend's first comments were incorrect in some respects. Darzi was looking to provide the fullest range of services possible in Hartlepool and Teesside. I accept that, but his remit was extended in December 2004 to take into account the point that I made earlier about the sucking in of services at the James Cook hospital. That concerned me at the time, but it was entirely reasonable in retrospect. He needed to see that the whole of the health economy of Teesside area was sustainable— [Interruption.]
	An answer to one of my recent parliamentary questions showed that births in Hartlepool have remained fairly static at about 1,100 a year, but the number of teenage pregnancies has increased as a proportion of the total number of births. It is widely recognised that very young and inexperienced mothers-to-be are reluctant to access health care until the last possible moment of their pregnancy, which increases the risk of a difficult delivery and means that they are disproportionately more likely to require assistance from a consultant. In my opinion, that supports Darzi's view that the centre of excellence for women and children's services should be based at Hartlepool— [Interruption.]
	 In direct response to— [Interruption.]

Iain Wright: I want to come on to the most compelling argument for Darzi, which directly relates to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor). I am fully aware that some Stockton residents are concerned about a midwife-led unit being based at North Tees. I do not wish to undermine any access to health services for the people of Stockton, and nor do I subscribe to the view that a midwife-led unit is inherently bad or unsafe. Equally, however, I would ask those residents not to compromise the choice and access that is available to the people of Hartlepool.
	In a recent reply to my parliamentary question, the Minister outlined the Government's policy on midwife-led units. The Minister said:
	"In its manifesto, the Government made a commitment that, by 2009, all women will have choice over where and how they have their baby and this should include offering services in a range of settings, including hospitals, midwife-led units and at home. The choices offered to women should ensure access to an emergency network that is readily available, should the need arise. The Government have further demonstrated its commitment to choice in maternity in the White Paper 'Our Health, Our Care, Our Say', published on 30 January this year, which pledges to raise the profile of maternity services and encourages doctors to support birth choices. Ultimately, decisions about the patterns of maternity service delivery are matters for local NHS trusts to determine, taking into account local population needs, priorities and resources."—[ Official Report, 30 October 2006; Vol. 451, c. 174W.]
	The choice over how and where to give birth is very different for an expectant mother from Hartlepool and Horden than for a similar woman living in Norton. Even if Darzi were implemented, an expectant mother in the north Tees area would have the choice of a consultant-led service at the university hospital of Hartlepool, the James Cook university hospital or Darlington Memorial hospital, or a midwife-led service at the university hospital of North Tees or Bishop Auckland hospital. That wide variety of choice can suit her and her family's needs and circumstances.
	The similarly expectant mother in Hartlepool or Horden could choose between a consultant-led service at the university hospital of Hartlepool or the city hospitals in Sunderland, or a midwife-led service at the university hospital of North Tees. A failure to adopt Darzi's recommendations in respect of maternity services does not provide my constituent with an appropriate choice, as set out in the Government's manifesto, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will address that in his response.
	With all this talk of hospital services, I readily concede that we as a town heavily rely on the hospital in Hartlepool, but that is largely a consequence of poor health and poor primary care infrastructure, both caused and exacerbated by deindustrialisation and mass unemployment from the 1970s onwards, poor diet and lifestyles and a woeful lack of investment in primary care over the past 40 to 50 years.
	Hartlepool males live 2.8 years and females 2.4 years less than the English average. Life expectancy is significantly worse for residents living in neighbourhood renewal areas, where access to and the take-up of health facilities can be more difficult. The difference in life expectancy between wards in Hartlepool is about 10 years. Premature deaths from heart disease, stroke and cancer are significantly worse than the English average.
	In a recent answer to a parliamentary question, the Minister stated that the number of accident and emergency admissions to the university hospital of Hartlepool had increased from just under 11,000 in 2000-01 to over 15,500 in 2004-05. That increase of more than 42 per cent. in four years demonstrates the inability of many people in my town to access primary care facilities. Above all else, that issue needs to be tackled before further reconfiguration of hospital services takes place.
	Much that is extremely positive is happening in Hartlepool. The vision for care, signed by all partners in the town, expresses the wish that health services should be shaped by local people and based as close to the community and neighbourhood as possible. The primary care trust is leading the modernisation building programme of premises that is needed in the town. There is much improvement in the provision of primary care, with work taking place at the Headland surgery, the Owton Rossmere health centre and the planned GP complex in the centre of town. However, the closure of the urgent care service at Owton Rossmere last week, ostensibly on the grounds of clinical safety, shows that there is still some way to go before that vision can be realised and is fully operational, but it also shows how early that reversal in primary care actually is: the modernisation programme is in its very earliest stages and is trying to reverse nearly half a century of chronic underinvestment. Patience and further substantial investment will be needed before the reliance on acute services is halted and then reversed.

Dari Taylor: I am listening with great care to my hon. Friend's statement about the investment in his hospital. I shall ask him once again. The investment in gynaecology and paediatrics at North Tees has been considerable. It is a department of excellence. He is suggesting to the House tonight that that department should close, and that a department will open at Hartlepool's hospital. I am suggesting that that department will close because the patient throughput will be inadequate. I would appreciate an answer.

Ivan Lewis: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright) on securing the debate and on the passionate and committed way in which he pursued the beliefs of many of his constituents in terms of the best way forward for maternity and paediatric services. I congratulate him on the way in which he has continued to make that case at every opportunity, both publicly and privately.
	It is somewhat amusing that the Opposition, who are not represented in the Chamber at the moment, claim that we are gerrymandering health reconfigurations in the interests of the Labour party, rather than considering the interests of the local population. Anybody listening to this evening's debate would have to say that we are not making a very good job of it, if that is the case. My hon. Friends the Members for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) and for Stockton, North (Frank Cook) made equally important contributions that gave a different view and showed their perception of the best interests of the local community and population in terms of maternity and paediatric services. If nothing else, that demonstrates that, at a local level at least, people are attempting to look at the reconfigurations from a clinical and service point of view, rather than being led by political reasons, from a political perspective—an accusation that is often made. If nothing else, that is a strength of the debate, and I would like to highlight that.
	I want to echo the tribute that my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool paid to NHS staff in Hartlepool, and throughout the region, including in the constituencies represented by my other hon. Friends who have contributed to the debate. NHS staff daily save lives and improve the quality of lives in constituencies up and down the country. They are the people who make the health service the proud institution that it is and we should always use opportunities such as this to pay tribute to them.
	A survey that we carried out last summer showed that 80 per cent. of women were satisfied with the maternity services that they received. That is an impressive response. However, I acknowledge that we still have a lot more to do, which is why we have to make some difficult decisions about local reconfiguration. The Government have invested £1.4 billion a year in maternity services. In 2001, we made a capital investment of £100 million to modernise facilities and to improve the environment in which maternity care is delivered. We have boosted the midwifery work force, with the result that there are 2,423 more midwives than there were in 1997, and the number of students entering the profession has risen by 44 per cent. in the same period. In the region of my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool, the number of midwives in the North East Strategic Health Authority has increased by 50 from 1,224 in 1997 to 1,274 in 2005. The number of midwives in North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust has increased by 48 from 95 in 1999 to 143 in 2005. Our clear vision for the future of maternity services is underpinned by three key drivers: the maternity standard of the national service framework for children, young people and maternity services; the 2005 manifesto commitment on choice; and the White Paper "Our health, our care, our say".

Ivan Lewis: These matters must be decided by taking account of people's local knowledge, local sensitivities and the local need, as defined by clinicians and managers, because Ministers sat in Westminster and Whitehall cannot possibly have a sensitive understanding of the situation facing every local community. I cannot respond directly to my hon. Friend's point. However, it is important to stress that the definition of choice when we talk about maternity is centred on home births, births in midwife-led units, and births in units that have not only midwife input, but considerable consultant input. That is why the definition of choice that we use when we talk about access to maternity services is slightly more complex than the traditional, conventional definition that we use when considering other NHS services.
	The promotion of normality during pregnancy and childbirth is key to the Government's vision for maternity services. The national service framework for children, young people and maternity services is the single most important model for such service delivery that the Government have introduced. More importantly, it is the most important model for pregnant women and their partners because it specifically contains a maternity standard. The standard outlines the Government's vision for the next 10 years, which is that women should have easy access to supportive, high-quality maternity services that are designed around their individual needs and those of their babies. That vision is reinforced in the Government's manifesto commitment about choice and the White Paper "Our health, our care, our say" with a further commitment to three actions, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool mentioned in his speech: to raise the profile of maternity services in both the public and the commissioning agenda; to ensure that payment by results supports the choices that women make; and to work with primary care trusts to review the existing maternity work force and identify whether more staff are needed to deliver the commitments.
	The White Paper outlined a vision of a truly personalised service that will give women as much control as possible during pregnancy and birth and post-birth. That will cover the ability to access information and to contact a midwife directly, in addition to services being made available at home, in a home-like setting, or in a hospital, and women being offered continuity of care before and after birth by a midwife whom they know. That will be in place by 2009.
	We are working in the Department with stakeholders to develop a national maternity reform strategy that will focus on the key areas of delivering the choice policy, improving access to maternity services and providing continuity of care and safe maternity services for all women. The plan will set out a single vision for choice in maternity services, identify risks and management strategies, and set out a strategy for delivery, including performance management arrangements, governance structures nationally, stakeholder engagement and the communication plan to support delivery. It is essential that, at national level, we enshrine the principles that will underpin the concept of choice that was one of the major points in our manifesto.
	The Darzi review was subject to a significant consultation exercise across the north-east. As a consequence, it became clear that there are competing, contrasting and conflicting views. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State decided to refer the matter to the independent reconfiguration panel so that it could consider the relevant findings. I am sure that my hon. Friend understands that, at the time when that panel is considering the matter, it would be entirely inappropriate for me to express an opinion on any aspect of the Darzi report or on the different views that have been expressed within the sub-region and the region affected.
	The matter is best left now to the independent reconfiguration panel. I accept that hon. Members must always and at every opportunity do their best to reflect the strongly held views and passionate beliefs of their constituents on these extremely important subjects. There are few things more important than a family's experience of antenatal, birth and postnatal care. Few experiences generate so much emotion and passion, and that is how it should be. I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, but the matter is with the independent reconfiguration panel and the decision is in its hands. We must await the panel's verdict.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at Eleven o'clock.